Hardback: 428 pages
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Corvus 2024
Source: Tywyn Public Library
First Sentences: The dying Camille talked to her seven-year-old daughter. 'We had to fight but I ever imagined that I would relish being a warrior. Your father was one too and a hero. One day you will go to Paris and find out what happened to him.'
Review Quote: 'A coming-of-age-story steeped in wisdom with an incredible sense of time and place' - Antonia Senior in The Times
Favourite Quote: I sit in the sun and think about whether I can afford a slice of Camembert from the cremerie or not. Paris has a strong, upside down effect on one.
So does marriage, said Hattie, adding, so does Dorking.
Main Character: Sophie Morel
Setting: Sussex, England and Paris, France
My Opinion:
Elizabeth Buchan has been a favourite author mine for over twenty years. I have a particular soft spot for her as she was born in Guildford, Surrey not that many miles from my own birthplace Dorking. In fact Dorking gets a mention in ‘Bonjour Sophie’!
It is 1959 and although WWII has been over for nearly fifteen years the aftermath is still being felt by everyone. The protagonist of the novel Sophie Morel is now eighteen and having just left boarding school finds life with her foster parents dull and difficult to say the least. With a great deal of spirit, she plans and succeeds in travelling to Paris to discover more about her background than the little she knows.
There is no doubt that the author is a talented storyteller and ‘Bonjour Sophie’ is another one written in her astute and atmospheric style. Highly recommend this to all her fans, plus anyone that has not yet discovered her writing and likes to fully immerse themselves in a novel.
Links to Previous Reviews: Two Women in Rome. The Museum of Broken Promises
Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:
It's 1959 and eighteen-year-old Sophie is determined that now is the time for her real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds brief excitement in an illicit love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands.
She dreams of escape to Paris, the Wartime home her mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but also offers the chance to discover more about her family background, and perhaps find a place where she can finally belong.
When Sophie eventually arrives in the city of her dreams it's both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected.
Author Profile:
Elizabeth spent her childhood moving home every three years – including living for brief periods in Egypt and Nigeria before moving to Guildford, York and Edinburgh.
After graduating from the University of Kent at Canterbury with a double honours degree in English and History, she began her career as a blurb writer at Penguin Books. This was a job which required the hide of a rhinoceros, a nimble mind and the – occasional – box of tissues. People tend to shout at blurb writers but they are resourceful creatures which she and the team proved by continuing to produce a stream of copy for back jackets through thick and thin. Looking back, it was a golden era. Not many people are paid to spend their time reading through the treasury which is Penguin Books and there was no better education. Later, after having married and producing two children, she moved on to become a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time which was something she had always planned to do since childhood – when she was frequently caught reading under the bedclothes with a torch after being put to bed which gave both books and reading a deliciously subversive tinge.
It was not an easy decision to take the gamble but she has never regretted it. As a writer, she has travelled all over the world and one of the many pleasures of the book tour has been to meet readers of all ages and to share with them a mutual passion for books and reading. She is in touch on line with many of them.
Elizabeth Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for The Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and, currently, for the Daily Mail. She has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliott literary prizes, and twice been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) awards. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival, a co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival and a past Chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Reproduced from Author's Official Website
Photograph, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.
Elizabeth Buchan - Author Website Twitter Profile Facebook - Elizabeth Buchan
